Hello all, I had some success with the Sparse Image question. My questions about creating (and later removing) a partition on the internal hard drive (with OS X) still stands.
SuperDuper can create “smart backup" sparse images within the standard OS X file structure. I was surprised at the speed the data transfer was done. From an external USB 3.0 drive it was very fast to the USB 3.0 iMac for the initial backup. Speed was quite reasonable when the Movies drive was plugged into the USB 2.0 machine (22 minutes for 50GB). The two tricky bits were understanding the logic of SuperDuper’s copy scripts - and the old trap of not using the “flippy triangles” to disclose full directory paths. It would be a more elegant solution to have the groups of movie files in their own partition, away from possible slippy finger issues in the user area. I have not tested the “restore” function from the sparse image: I’ve had enough learnings for today! Cheers Alan On 13 Dec 2014, at 1:04 pm, Alan Smith <[email protected]> wrote: > I would like to utilise some of the vast unused space on the internal drives > of two iMacs as backups for films. Is this possible? If it is possible > then what is the downside? Could such a partition be later removed to > restore the space to OS X? I do not want to go through the disk-erase and > OS X re-install operation! > > My concept is to use SuperDuper to create a sparse image (which permits smart > updates) of some of the films on a USB 3 external drive. In practice I > would use say three sparse images for ease of management. > > iMac 1 (2012) has 1TB with Fusion Drive. iMac 2 (2009) has a standard 1TB > drive. I would prefer to use the Fusion Drive iMac for the backups. Both > iMacs have Mavericks installed, and hence should also have Recovery > partitions. (If an OS X upgrade or Boot Camp can install partitions, why > not me??) > > I have assumed a partition would be needed, but can a sparse image simply be > used as a file within the ‘Macintosh HD’ OS X startup volume structure? > > > Regards, > Alan > > Alan Smith > Late 2012 iMac 27" Intel Quad Core i5 Fusion 3.2GHz 8G RAM - OSX 10.9.5 > Mavericks > Late 2009 iMac 21.5" Intel Core 2 Duo 3.06GHz 12G RAM - OSX 10.9.5 Mavericks > iPhone5; iPad2; ATV2 > > > > > > > > > -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- > Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> > Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> > Settings & Unsubscribe - > <http://lists.wamug.org.au/listinfo/wamug.org.au-wamug> -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> Settings & Unsubscribe - <http://lists.wamug.org.au/listinfo/wamug.org.au-wamug>
